Fleeting

Fleeting is a library that GitLab Runner uses to provide a plugin-based abstraction for a cloud provider’s instance groups.

The following executors use fleeting to scale runners:

Find a fleeting plugin

GitLab maintains these official plugins:

Cloud provider	Notes
Google Cloud	Uses Google Cloud instance groups
AWS	Uses AWS Auto Scaling groups
Azure	Uses Azure Virtual Machine Scale Sets. Only Uniform orchestration mode is supported.

The following plugins are community maintained:

Cloud provider	OCI Reference	Notes

Community maintained plugins are owned, built, hosted and maintained by contributors outside of GitLab (the community). GitLab owns and maintains the Fleeting library and API to provide static code review. GitLab cannot test community plugins because we don’t have access to all the necessary computing environments. Community members should build, test, and publish plugins to an OCI repository and provide the reference on this page through merge requests. The OCI reference should be accompanied by notes on the where to report issues, the support and stability level of the plugin, and where to find documentation.

Configure a fleeting plugin

To configure fleeting, in the config.toml, use the [runners.autoscaler] configuration section.

The README.md file for each plugin contains important information regarding installation and configuration.

Install a fleeting plugin

To install a fleeting plugin, use either the:

OCI registry distribution (recommended)
Manual binary installation

Install with the OCI registry distribution

Plugins are installed to ~/.config/fleeting/plugins on UNIX systems, and %APPDATA%/fleeting/plugins on Windows. To override where plugins are installed, update the environment variable FLEETING_PLUGIN_PATH.

To install the fleeting plugin:

In the config.toml, in the [runners.autoscaler] section, add the fleeting plugin:

[[runners]]
  name = "my runner"
  url = "https://gitlab.com"
  token = "<token>"
  shell = "sh"

executor = "instance"

[runners.autoscaler]
  plugin = "aws:latest"

[[runners]]
  name = "my runner"
  url = "https://gitlab.com"
  token = "<token>"
  shell = "sh"

executor = "instance"

[runners.autoscaler]
  plugin = "googlecloud:latest"

[[runners]]
  name = "my runner"
  url = "https://gitlab.com"
  token = "<token>"
  shell = "sh"

executor = "instance"

[runners.autoscaler]
  plugin = "azure:latest"

Run gitlab-runner fleeting install.

`plugin` formats

The plugin parameter supports the following formats:

<name>
<name>:<version constraint>
<repository>/<name>
<repository>/<name>:<version constraint>
<registry>/<repository>/<name>
<registry>/<repository>/<name>:<version constraint>

Where:

registry.gitlab.com is the default registry.
gitlab-org/fleeting/plugins is the default repository.
latest is the default version.

Version constraint formats

The gitlab-runner fleeting install command uses the version constraint to find the latest matching version in the remote repository.

When GitLab Runner runs, it uses the version constraint to find the latest matching version that is installed locally.

Use the following version constraint formats:

Format	Description
`latest`	Latest version.
`<MAJOR>`	Selects the major version. For example, `1` selects the version that matches `1..`.
`<MAJOR>.<MINOR>`	Selects the major and minor version. For example, `1.5` selects the latest version that matches `1.5.*`.
`<MAJOR>.<MINOR>.<PATCH>`	Selects the major and minor version, and patch. For example, `1.5.1` selects the version `1.5.1`.

Install binary manually

To manually install a fleeting plugin:

Download the fleeting plugin binary for your system:
Ensure the binary has a name in the format of fleeting-plugin-<name>. For example, fleeting-plugin-aws.
Ensure the binary can be discovered from $PATH. For example, move it to /usr/local/bin.

In the config.toml, in the [runners.autoscaler] section, add the fleeting plugin. For example:

[[runners]]
  name = "my runner"
  url = "https://gitlab.com"
  token = "<token>"
  shell = "sh"

executor = "instance"

[runners.autoscaler]
  plugin = "fleeting-plugin-aws"

[[runners]]
  name = "my runner"
  url = "https://gitlab.com"
  token = "<token>"
  shell = "sh"

executor = "instance"

[runners.autoscaler]
  plugin = "fleeting-plugin-googlecloud"

[[runners]]
  name = "my runner"
  url = "https://gitlab.com"
  token = "<token>"
  shell = "sh"

executor = "instance"

[runners.autoscaler]
  plugin = "fleeting-plugin-azure"

Fleeting plugin management

Use the following fleeting subcommands to manage fleeting plugins:

Command	Description
`gitlab-runner fleeting install`	Install the fleeting plugin from the OCI registry distribution.
`gitlab-runner fleeting list`	List referenced plugins and the version used.
`gitlab-runner fleeting login`	Sign in to private registries.